Yonathan Zohar honored for lifetime of contributions to fish endocrinology research and advances in aquaculture

Yonathan Zohar, professor of marine biotechnology, has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Fish Endocrinology. Zohar’s work at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor has produced fundamental discoveries in fish reproductive biology and applied the findings to the aquaculture industry, resulting in major advances. In 2020, the Binational Agricultural Research Development (BARD) Fund, a partnership program between the U.S. and Israel, also recognized Zohar for the outsize economic impact of his resea

See full story here: https://umbc.edu/stories/zohar-lifetime-achievement-aquaculture/

algae cultures in petri dishes

Inside a Carbon Capture System, Two New Lifeforms are Discovered

While growing microalgae in tanks fed by industrial flue gas – a way to pull CO2 from the air – the team found two entirely new bacterial species, now named Phycocordibacter aenigmaticus and Minusculum obligatum, from a barely-explored branch of life scientists call microbial dark matter. What makes these new species remarkable is that they lack the metabolic machinery to produce their own energy or proteins, and therefore rely entirely on other species for these essential elements. Yet, despite those limits, they dominated the tanks – over 95% of the bacteria in some samples. Finding so many in the tanks raises questions about whether they help or hinder the community’s ability to utilize CO2 from flue gases. 

Sustainability